Mark Ellis, loon photographer

The 2022 loon calendar featuring photos of loons by Mark Ellis is still available at The Nest in Crosslake Town Square. Calendar sales are donated to the National Loon Center in Crosslake.

Mark Ellis easily takes 5,000 photos each weekend at his cabin on a northern Crow Wing County lake.

When a pair of loons on the lake successfully fledged two chicks, Ellis made a 2021 calendar showing his best photos of those loon babies.

He sold the calendar on his Facebook page (Mark Ellis Photography) and website (markellis.com), and his employer - 3M Co. - contributed matching funds.

The result was a $500 donation to the National Loon Center in Crosslake.

“Everything they do is really good,” Ellis said of the loon center and his decision to support the endeavor. “Their cause is literally what I try to do with my photos.”

The avid nature photographer made another calendar with loon photos this year, and profits climbed to $2,600 with another 3M Co. match.

That calendar is still available through Ellis’s Facebook page and website, as well as at the National Loon Center’s headquarters - The Nest in Crosslake Town Square.

Ellis lives in St. Paul and is a research chemical engineer at 3M, where a lot of his work is in the area of sustainability. His grandfather built the cabin Ellis now owns in the late 1950s. Venturing there since he was just a baby, Ellis became interested in photography around age 12.

Years after his grandparents sold the cabin, Ellis said: “I got all nostalgic and hauled my kids up one day. I was regretting not keeping it in the family.

“I started wondering about if it was available, and it wasn’t,” he said.

A year later he went to check for other cabins on the same lake. Again, he returned to his grandparents’ cabin where he ran into the owner, who was renting the cabin to friends.

“Entering the cabin returned me to my days of youth and wonder at the cabin. It almost felt like strangers were inside even though it was 15-20 years later,” Ellis said. “I said to the owner, ‘If you ever sell, here’s my card.’ About nine months later, the owner called, offering the cabin to us, and I couldn’t turn it down.

“The cabin literally looks the same as back then,” he said, noting there are still small cabins, many with original families as owners, on his lake.

The lake is only big enough for one pair of nesting loons, and Ellis has been documenting their stories with his camera for the past decade.

“They know me. I know how close I can get with the ones I know. I can tell if they don’t like it and I don’t go closer, and often they come closer to me.”

Mark Ellis